In Her Voice

A treasure of a women’s prayer book containing 28 hand-written prayers and ornamented with micrography makes this book innovative and unique.

By HAVIVA NER-DAVID

May 12, 2011 14:12

HANNAH’S PRAYER 311.
(photo credit: KOREN PUBLISHERS JERUSALEM)

THERE HAS BEEN MUCH interest during the past few years in Jewish women’s prayer.
Since the publication of Aliza Lavi’s book, “Tefillat Nashim,” in 2005 (an
English translation was published three years later), this has been a hot
topic.

“Tefillat Nashim” is a collection of women’s private prayers from
various time periods – some written by men for women and some written by women
for women. Despite the fact that before the 20th century Jewish women did
not act as prayer leaders, nor were they counted as part of the quorum of 10
required for public group prayer, the truth is that women praying in private is
nothing new. The prayer of the biblical Hannah serves as both the paradigm of
formal prayer in Jewish law and the model for personal heartfelt
prayer.

As Bleema Posner, the owner of a New Jersey bookstore
specializing in artistic Judaic books, facsimiles, and book arts, writes in an
introduction to “In Her Voice”: “It is noteworthy that our tradition views
woman’s private prayer as the defining standard for our uniform prayers. To the
rabbis, tefillat Hannah [Hannah’s prayer] captured the essence of what we pray
and how we pray. Perhaps this is an acknowledgment that the wellspring of Jewish
liturgy flows from the purity and emotion of the Jewish woman’s personal
prayer.”

In private, women prayed in the vernacular (in Yiddish, these
prayers were called tehinot) and even in Hebrew when they could. Many of these
prayers were written to mark life-cycle events, such as the onset of menses,
pregnancy, birth, marriage, etc. And some were written to coincide with
the performance of mitzvot that were seen as especially meant for women, such as
immersing in the mikve, lighting the Sabbath candles, and separating the dough
for the Sabbath bread, or challa.

“In Her Voice” is a compilation of
private prayers like these, as well as various other prayers that relate to
women’s spiritual and religious lives. For example, Hannah’s prayer is included
in this collection, as is “Eshet Hayil,” from the Book of Proverbs, a song
praising a “Woman of Valor” sung at the Shabbat dinner table on Friday nights,
as well as the blessing traditionally recited each morning by Jewish women
thanking God for creating them according to God’s will (as opposed to the prayer
men recite, thanking God for not creating them as women!).

What is
especially innovative and unique about Keshet’s book, however, is the
combination of these women’s prayers with the classically male art of manuscript
illumination, here done by a woman artist. Keshet, who lives in Pardes Hanna in
central Israel, became interested in this art form and specifically in the work
of the Lisbon Workshop, a group of Jewish artists who collaborated from
1469-1496 to create illuminated manuscripts, the most famous of which is the
Lisbon Bible. With the final expulsion of the Jews from Iberia, this school’s
style was abruptly ended. Keshet here revives it.

“IN HER VOICE” CONTAINS
28 prayers and tehinot, each one illuminated in Keshet’s interpretation of the
Lisbon style. The prayers (written in calligraphy by Sharon Binder) are further
ornamented with micrography, the creation of shapes and forms by writing texts
in minuscule letters and words. The artwork as well as the texts chosen to
accompany the central prayers were obviously the result of much thought and
study. (In her personal note at the opening of the book, Keshet thanks Dr. Joel
Wolowelsky, who teaches at the Yeshiva of Flatbush, Brooklyn, for his help in
choosing these texts and in writing explanations of them.)

For instance,
bordering Hannah’s prayer is the text from the Talmud, which uses this
prayer as
the basis for a discussion about the nature of prayer itself. And set
into that
border as pieces of women’s jewelry are the 12 stones of the hoshen, the
High
Priest’s breastplate – combining feminine and masculine, physical and
spiritual,
and Hannah and Eli the High Priest (who found Hannah praying in the
Tabernacle
for a son and mistook her for a drunk because of her intense yet silent
prayer).
Also included in the border is a menora, a fixture of the Tabernacle,
and a Magen David broken in two, symbolizing Hannah’s broken
heart. The branches within the border represent the fulfillment of
Hannah’s prayer: The buds at the bottom of the page move outward and
upward and
are transformed from buds to leaves, to flowers, and finally to fruit at
the
top.

Another example is a bat mitzva prayer, traditionally recited by
girls reaching the age of 12 in Turin and Milan. Above the prayer is a rising
sun, which calls to mind the elevation of the girl to adulthood. The sun itself
is a micrography of “Pirkei Shira,” a collection of hymns praising God put in
the mouths of various creatures, personifying nature, which some women recite
every weekday.

Another manuscript, for the zeved habat, the Sephardi
ceremony celebrating the birth of a daughter that has now become common in
Ashkenazi circles as well, contains both the traditional naming and blessing
that are part of the zeved habat ceremony, and a more modern addition – an
adaptation for the zeved habat of the “harahaman” the special blessings recited
at a boy’s brit mila circumcision ceremony. For this manuscript, Keshet chose a
border with two verses from the “Song of Songs,” embellished with pomegranates,
conveying the bounty of blessings and good fortune in welcoming the new
“princess,” her crown topping each fruit, gifts of jewels suggested by its
kernels.

The prayers in this book are derived from various sources:
biblical, Talmudic, Yiddish tehinot, and Ladino prayers. Some come from “The
Prayer Book for the Married Woman” (written for Yehudit Kutcher Coen by her
husband in 18th century Italy), and some are modern creations, such as the
“Prayer for Agunot,” by Shelly Frier List, and a tehina for a “Woman Prior to
Torah Study,” by Yael Levine.

IWOULD HAVE PREFERRED THAT Keshet had
included more of these modern prayers written by women and fewer older prayers
written by men for women.

As a rabbi who often offers consultation about
how to create modern ceremonies and rituals, I find these prayers to be much more useful than some of the older
prayers that inevitably are a product of their pre-feminist times. While I
appreciate putting the modern prayers in context, I would have preferred more of
a balance between old and new – especially since Keshet’s illumination attempts
to create that same balance by using the Lisbon Workshop style through the
paintbrush of a 21st-century Israeli woman.

There are also pieces that
are unclear in their message. Are they making a subtle feminist point, or are
they actually espousing a more traditional stance? For example, the blessing
women traditionally recite in the morning, thanking God for creating them
according to God’s will, is accompanied by two midrashim (rabbinic texts that
elaborate on biblical texts) from Bereishit Rabba that suggest that a woman’s
virtues are her modesty and her physical beauty. And the border of this
manuscript is a micrography of the verses that tell of Eve’s creation – both the
verse from Chapter 1, which describes man and woman being created alongside one
another as equals, and the verse from Genesis Chapter 2, which describes Eve
being created from Adam’s side.

Are we meant to read these verses and
midrashim critically, or are we meant to take them at face value? Keshet’s
illumination stresses the sacred nature of the texts she chose, which militates
against a critical reading. And the text describing the manuscript presents the
verse from “Genesis” Chapter 2 as a “more detailed description of how woman was
created from man’s body” with no suggestion that perhaps these two verses are in
fact two different versions of the creation of humanity. It is difficult to
believe that a modern Israeli woman artist, religious or otherwise (Keshet is
silent as to her views), would have no feminist critique of these misogynist
texts.

Nevertheless, this book is a treasure. I am personally planning to
take a drive to Pardes Hanna to see the original illuminated manuscripts.

Sites Of Interest

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